Cancer

The lights blink on in the Command Center, a surprisingly small facility in an indistinguishable American city.  The sign outside the building declares only Acme Labs in rather mundane neon.  A muted conversation begins, becomes intelligible as a commanding voice rises in fervor: "... What we do every night: Try to take over the world!"
 
General:  The Brain
 

Quick! While the government's shut down, let's switch everything to metric!

Today's Definitions:
 
Tapas: Spanish Dim Sum
 
Dim Sum: Chinese Tapas

Re: The Last Word
 
It occurs to me Religion and Gaming have one thing in common.
 
Both have a significant, and vocal, portion of their populations whose only real answer to anything is "Kill It With Fire!!"

Re: The Last Word
 
A man walking along the beach finds an old bottle. When he tries to clean it a genie comes billowing forth. "Oh master," says the genie scratching his gut. "You are entitled to one wish. What do you wish for?"
 
"Well," replies the man. "I've always wanted to see Europe, but I'm afraid to fly and I can't stand boats. I wish for a bridge from here to Europe so I can drive there."
 
"Are you kidding?" asks the genie. "Do you have any idea what you're asking for? I mean, the contractors, the suppliers, the engineers, not to mention the union hassles! Just doing the paperwork will take years! That's way too difficult. You don't want that. Wish for something else."
 
The man thinks. "Ok, then. I wish I understood women."
 
The genie stares at him for a moment. "So, this bridge...four lanes be alright?"

Re: The Last Word
 
By all that is holy, I thought turkeys could fly.

When I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide
Where I stop and I turn and I go for a ride
Till I get to the bottom and I see you again
Yeah yeah yeah hey
 
Do you, don't you want me to love you
I'm coming down fast but I'm miles above you
Tell me tell me tell me come on tell me the answer
Well you may be a lover but you ain't no dancer
 
Now helter skelter helter skelter
Helter skelter yeah
Ooh !
 
Will you, won't you want me to make you
I'm coming down fast but don't let me break you
Tell me tell me tell me the answer
You may be a lover but you ain't no dancer
 
Look out helter skelter helter skelter
Helter skelter ooh
 
Look out, cos here she comes
 
When I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide
And I stop and I turn and I go for a ride
And I get to the bottom and I see you again
Yeah yeah yeah
 
Well do you, don't you want me to make you
I'm coming down fast but don't let me break you
Tell me tell me tell me the answer
You may be a lover but you ain't no dancer
 
Look out helter skelter helter skelter
Helter skelter
 
Look out helter skelter
She's coming down fast
Yes she is
Yes she is coming down fast
 
(My head is spinning, ooh...
 
Ha ha ha, ha ha ha, alright!
 
I got blisters on my fingers!)

Superman Gets His Classic Costume Back For Action #1000
 

 
And there's only one thing I can say to that--
 

Nightime's flyers feel their pains
Drugstore takes down the chains
Metal motion comes in bursts
But the gas station can quench that thirst
Suspension cracked on unmade road
The trucker's eyes read 'Overload'
And out on the subway
Rael Imperial Aerosol Kid
Exits into daylight, spraygun hid
And the lamb lies down on Broadway

When I ran from the hounds of hell
Twist my foot, I nearly fell
I was lucky I was alive
One look back I could have died

I was the sole survivor
Sole survivor
Sole survivor
Solitary fighter

When I saw it I was amazed
One time glory right in my gaze
I saw the sorrow, I saw the joy
Right in the darkness none could destroy

I was the sole survivor
Sole survivor
Sole survivor
Solitary fighter

And from the wreckage I will arise
Cast the ashes back in their eyes
See the fire, I will defend
Just keep on burning right to the end
I was the sole survivor
Sole survivor
Sole survivor
Solitary fighter  

Hm, I'm behind, so I will tip my hand a bit.
 
"The targets are so thoroughly degenerate that there is no chance they can withstand us," said the voice over the transdimensional communicator.  "Their only hope is that they can subvert your forces, corrupt them, and disable your effectiveness.  Therefore, your operational leader must be incorruptible in fact as well as in appearance."
 
"I have a candidate who will fit.  I merely have to win him over," said the shaded figure in the command center.
 
Dragon: Mighty Mouse, the original Terrytoons version, that lasted into the late 1960s.

I will dip my toe into this draft. 
 
We will be protecting/Invading DCU's Earth 26
Known most for their champions:

It's not in the way that you hold me
It's not in the way you say you care
It's not in the way you've been treating my friends
It's not in the way that you'll stay till the end
It's not in the way you look or the things that you say that you do

Hold the line
Love isn't always on time
Whoa oh oh
Hold the line
Love isn't always on time
Whoa oh oh

It's not in the words that you told me
It's not in the way you say you're mine
It's not in the way that you came back to me
It's not in the way that your love set me free
It's not in the way you look or the things that you say that you do

Hold the line
Love isn't always on time
Whoa oh oh
Hold the line
Love isn't always on time
Whoa oh oh

It's not in the words that you told me
It's not in the way you say you're mine, oooh
It's not in the way that you came back to me
It's not in the way that your love set me free
It's not in the way you look or the things that you say that you do

Hold the line
Love isn't always on time
Whoa oh oh
Hold the line
Love isn't always on time
(Love isn't always on time)
Hold the line
Love isn't always on time
(Love isn't always, love isn't always on time)
Hold the line
Love isn't always on time
Love isn't always on time
Love isn't always on time
Love isn't always on time
Whoa oh oh

The tension between astronomical measurements of the Hubble Constant (the present rate of expansion of the Universe) and the value that comes out of analysis of the inhomogeneities in the cosmic microwave background (from the Planck satellite mission) is getting worse.  A direct calibration of the Cepheid distance scale by parallax measurements of seven long-period Cepheid variables, affirming the HST result obtained back in the 1990s and tightening its error bars, was submitted two weeks back.  The two values are 73.45+/-1.66 km/s/Mpc for the new Cepheid distance scale, compared to 67.74±0.46 in the same units from Planck; that's a 3.7-sigma discrepancy.  That's enough to start getting interesting and/or annoying.
 
Cosmology may not be as solved a problem as has been asserted.

Aliens are NOT the cause of the strange dimming of Boyajian's Star

The tension between astronomical measurements of the Hubble Constant (the present rate of expansion of the Universe) and the value that comes out of analysis of the inhomogeneities in the cosmic microwave background (from the Planck satellite mission) is getting worse.  A direct calibration of the Cepheid distance scale by parallax measurements of seven long-period Cepheid variables, affirming the HST result obtained back in the 1990s and tightening its error bars, was submitted two weeks back.  The two values are 73.45+/-1.66 km/s/Mpc for the new Cepheid distance scale, compared to 67.74±0.46 in the same units from Planck; that's a 3.7-sigma discrepancy.  That's enough to start getting interesting and/or annoying.
 
Cosmology may not be as solved a problem as has been asserted.

Instant poll: what ending would be the most amusing to append to that?
In one week! Among girls Death Tribble snogged In section 243 during last weekend's Steelers-Jaguars game In the frozen foods section of the local Piggly Wiggly Involving four dropbears, six jackalopes, and the casts of three Mexican soap operas ... Foxbat wiggles his eyebrows ... cross-talk with an app for fast pizza deliveries is rumored to be a contributor all due on Groundhog Day!

Mercury conducts, so you could do both.

My eyes swept over the devastation, watering, I told myself, from the reek of death and the acrid smoke still twisting from ruins. 
 
Every house had been torched; the streets were choked with the massacred townsfolk, even to the infant cloven in two lying beside the burned chunks that might have been its mother.  Broken and charred goods lay strewn about, with a few things doubtless carried off, but most merely wasted in these ruins.  The dogs had been killed and chopped up; what livestock the invaders could not capture they had shot and left dead in the pens.  Even the cats had been killed and left where they fell.  Barns had burned down, and those small conflagrations had spread to other buildings as wind and fortune had permitted and consumed what it would haphazardly.  The well had had a number of severed parts of multiple bodies dropped into it, with a child’s severed head floating face-up in the undrinkable water several yards down.  In the church a dozen or more townsfolk had been slain on the altar before the other parts of the shrine had been pulled down, and it seems that a dozen or more looters had defecated in strategic places to put further personal emphasis on the destruction.
 
Only the buzzing flies survived here.
 
My escort was silent, whether in reaction to the totality with which this village had been expunged, or out of fear of what I might do, I was unsure.  Perhaps they were unsure of that as well.
 
The Sight showed only the last sniggerings of the Fire That Consumes in some still-smoldering corners.  Everything was dead.  
 
The utterly warmthless breeze from between the stars blew through my soul as my Sight registered the path the invaders had taken on leaving.  I let its coldness possess me.
 
“The nature of this war has changed,” the coldness said with my voice into the silence.
 
“The task before us now is to exterminate their race.  Only after that will we mourn and rebuild.
 
“We must feast upon the tomorrows they will never have.”
 
The wind from the Void blew away from me, leaving the frozen bits of my humanity to rattle against each other in my heart.  On its own volition it consumed the tiny remnants of Fire as it swept over what had once been a village on its way back to the infinite emptiness from which it came.  The wind chilled my escorts’ hearts so they too saw only the starkness of the Nothing to which we had to consign our enemy.
 
“That way,” I pointed, and we set out.

Check out the symptoms for late state syphilis some time. 

AND YOU CALL YOURSELF AUSTRALIAN?!?!?!!!?

Fly through the Orion Nebula